A Little More Time
by Arcer
Summary: Oneshot. As Satoshi sits with Daisuke on a park bench, he gives some thought to the dark future looming ahead for both the fated teens. Things will come to a head soon, he knows, and what will happen then?


**Title**: A Little More Time

**Summary**: While sitting with Daisuke on a park bench at night due to a chance meeting, Satoshi's mind turns to thoughts of the near future, which seems to hold nothing but darkness for both of them.

**Disclaimer**: Neither Daisuke Niwa nor Satoshi Hikari/Hiwatari are mine… I fervently wish Satoshi was mine, however!

**A/N**: Please read and review! It's my first one-shot… it turned out a little more angsty than I thought it would. Enjoy!

A Little More Time

"The stars are really pretty tonight."

Satoshi glanced over at the boy sitting beside him, being careful to keep his face expressionless. His companion was gazing up, head thrown unwarily back, smiling—so openly cheerful it was almost hard to watch. Afraid to look more than a few seconds, he soon averted his gaze, but after a beat he turned back. It amazed him, the simplicity of this boy, the innocence that allowed him to make such a statement. He said things and believed them, too. There was no artificialness or pretense with Daisuke Niwa.

As he considered this, one of the words caught and held in his mind. He didn't pay any attention to it, taking his immediate focus away from it with the sureness of long habit, but while he could choose to ignore it, he could not stop it from being there. It felt like a splinter lodged in his thoughts. The name… it was the name. _Niwa._

_Stop,_ he told himself firmly, and obediently his sudden tension slipped away, gone for now but crouching nearby, ready to pounce. Obediently. Yes, his body obeyed him, just as his mind did, just as everything always did, with the exception of one shadowy figure waiting at the depths of his darkest dreams… but no… It wouldn't do to think too much. Not now.

"Don't you like looking at stars, Satoshi?"

Shaken from his reverie, the pale youth re-fastened his attention on the figure sharing the bench with him, not a meter away. Daisuke looked at him with those large, childlike eyes—everything about him was childlike—with that expression that only the utterly guiltless can hold. Pure. Unlike himself. He smiled very slightly, about as much as he usually permitted his facial expression to change. "Not particularly. Astronomy isn't my forte."

Daisuke looked taken aback. "Oh," he said, blinking, and for a moment Satoshi wondered whether he ought to have said something different. But the other teen just shrugged and went back to gazing upwards. "Well, I like it," he announced happily.

Satoshi said nothing, in his typical manner of response, and the two boys sat for a few moments in agreeable, if not quite friendly, silence. The conversation had progressed in this manner—a few uncomfortable words exchanged, then quiet lapsing once more—since Daisuke had found his classmate sitting alone in the park and had decided to keep him company, about an hour earlier. However, the more naïve of the two didn't seem to notice the awkwardness, and the other pretended he didn't.

At length Daisuke spoke again: "Do you ever wish on stars, Satoshi?"

This time Satoshi really turned and stared at him. Before he could say anything, Daisuke laughed a little and answered himself. "I suppose not. You don't believe in stuff like that, do you, Satoshi? You're too smart. But I do," he continued, turning thoughtful. "I don't know why—it's not as though I believe anything will happen—but I do anyway."

Nonplussed, all that the adolescent police commander could find to say was, "Do you?"

"Yes. It's almost as though—as though I believe in the _idea_ of believing… as though I think that by doing silly things like wishing on stars, I preserve something of the part of me that's able to believe…" For a moment Daisuke looked brooding and pensive. Then he met Satoshi's eyes and grinned sheepishly. "Never mind. I'm confusing myself. Sorry I rambled."

No, not _everything_ about him was childlike, thought Satoshi. "No, don't be sorry," he answered absentmindedly. Despite his earlier, firm push, the dreaded thoughts were creeping back into him, filling him with poison. He resisted, stiffening, but they entered him anyway, in a swirling dark miasma of something that was half salvation and half doom.

Without turning his head, he watched the other boy out of the corner of his eye. He was stargazing again, his slight frame spread easily on the cold bench, with the subconsciously carefree attitude of one who knows he has nothing to fear. _Daisuke Niwa,_ he said silently. _Niwa. I _will _have to crush you one day._

At the thought, he rebelled instantly. _I don't have to. I can control the path I travel. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. _But he was lying and he knew it. Niwa, he reminded himself. At all costs, he must remember that the youth whom he sat boy with such companionability now was a Niwa—his sworn enemy, the one he had to conquer. And in order not to lose himself when the time came, he must continually distance himself from the enemy. But it was so difficult, when they were sitting together in an empty park, the two so different yet alike. And it was so easy to convince himself that this could go on, so easy to believe that his nightmares weren't real. But they were. It was reality. And he mustn't lose sight of it.

"Daisuke—" he began, but Daisuke started suddenly, looking at his watch.

"Oh, no," he cried, leaping up. "I should be home. I have homework, I'm late for dinner, and Dar—" he suddenly stumbled over his words, stealing a hasty glance at Satoshi— "er—my mom's going to be mad. I gotta go! See you tomorrow, Satoshi!" He was already running.

Satoshi sat in silence as Daisuke's back faded away, out of the park and into the night. At the end of the street, when he could hardly be seen anymore, Daisuke turned back and waved. Then he was no longer there.

As Daisuke had said, they would see each other tomorrow at school. Then, no doubt, at least the day after if not immediately tomorrow, the young prodigy would be kept busy all night chasing after Dark, and they might chance to see each other again—though Satoshi knew Daisuke's counterpart was somewhat less pleasant.

It was hectic and confusing and irrational and far beyond all logic. He suspected it was far beyond all sanity. In fact, he was certain of it. But for some reason or other, he didn't much want a change. He liked—he seldom, if ever, used the sentiment _like, _so this was unusual for him—he liked the way things were now.

They would be separated someday, he knew, sooner rather than later, and be reunited as enemies—the Niwa and the Hikari, just as it always had been. He wasn't asking to change destiny. But… just a little more time. A little more time to keep things the way they were. A little more time to be just Satoshi and not a Hikari… a little more time to be with Daisuke and not a Niwa.

_Just a little more time. It's all I ask. _A little more time to be friends with the enemy—a fragile friendship that would soon be shattered into myriad splinters and blown away as though it had never existed; a brittle, unstable friendship that both knew were built on deceit and pretense and being blind to the world, but a real friendship just the same: a friendship couldn't be broken if it had never been there. And it _would_ be broken, he felt sure. Yes, what they had was an unnatural thing, not meant to exist, and soon the world would take it away in its way of destroying and reclaiming things that were not meant to exist. But a little more time before that destruction… just a little more time.

He sighed and looked up at the stars.

**A/N**: I really hope you liked it! Thanks!

Arcer


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